I can't give an authoritative answer, but I believe it's a factor of the number of shots fired divided by the number of shots that cause an effect on a target. So yes, firing 1000 times into the ground will lower your accuracy. Splash damage should count though. Your accuracy may be low because you fire comparatively few rounds with the weapons you have high accuracy with.
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agent86Jan 2 '12 at 13:47

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@agent86 Well, I and several my buds were in doubt about firing in the ground, because one of them had a 42% accuracy by playing a lot on Metro and shooting people with a shotgun, and a couple of them had reported him, so he decided to spend some time shooting rounds into nowhere. He took the SAW and was shooting for like half an hour, almost non-stop. The accuracy never went down. About my top weapons - half of all kills are made by top three of them, and they are MP443 with 25%, SV98 with 35% and M98B with 31%.
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Olegs JeremejevsJan 2 '12 at 13:55

All we've got is anecdotal evidence, so I'm not going to debate this further with you :) Sorry if my experiences aren't matching up with yours.
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agent86Jan 2 '12 at 14:03

2 Answers
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A hit is considered as anything that does damage to an opposing enemy/vehicle. Verifying my L96 accuracy, I have 1463 hits, with 4,119 shots fired. The site says my accuracy is 35.52% and doing the simple math, that's what that ratio is.

Edit: Answering your bullet points

Yes, your accuracy would go down if no damage is done to an enemy player.

Rocket accuracy is the same as all other weapons. Damage done = hit. It is how you can have over 100% accuracy with weapons since 1 shot could hit multiple players.

I answered originally

Your general accuracy is the total sum of your hits/shots fired for all your weapons. So while your top weapons have high accuracy ratings and make your general accuracy higher, your bottom weapons drop your general accuracy.